Harmony Beyond Music

Harmony Beyond Music is a series of concerts and podcasts exploring themes of equality and diversity. The concerts are performed by internationally recognised musicians brought together by Reiko Fujisawa. The podcasts are presented by Peter Quantrill and Andy Pratt.

Outsiders.

A quartet of composers who never fitted into polite society. Satie and his music took a sideways look at Belle Epoque Paris, while Rued Langgaard stuck to his Romantic voice in a Danish world of music dominated by Carl Nielsen. Growing up as a labourer’s son on a small island, Nielsen himself never fitted other people’s ideas of a sophisticated artist, while Beethoven tugged at the strings of patronage which dictated the terms of a composer as servant to his masters. Compromise was an alien word to all four composers, and their music is proud to be different.

Protest doesn’t have to take the form of grim defiance. Arvo Pärt rebelled from Soviet conformity with a new and timeless voice of calm. Martinu wrote his Second Sonata in the US as a wartime exile from his beloved Czech lands, but he translated his exile into music of joy in adversity. In the hands of Weinberg and Casals, the cello becomes an extension of the human voice, conquering struggle with heroic defiance.

In this first podcast to accompany our series of concerts, Peter Quantrill and Andy Pratt discuss the overall theme and look into the question of “what is Harmony Beyond Music”?